Glowing tribute to a great missionary

Father Robert Astorino, MM (1943- 2020) Photo: Christopher Khoo

Grief has overtaken me since the news came out of the blue. Maryknoll priest Father Robert Astorino (popularly known as Father Bob) passed away in New York on June 25. He was 77. Following his ordination in 1970 he came to Hong Kong as a missionary and spent most of his 50 years of priestly life in Asia. Father Bob was my first guru in journalism and I believe if I did not meet him 2009 I could not stay in this field and accept it as a personal and collective mission. I am so shocked as if I have lost my father, but I am unable cry. I have resorted to writing, what he has taught me like many others, to pay a tribute to him.

Literally, Father Bob was the messiah for the Catholic Church in Asia when it comes to social communication. In the 1970s, he found local Catholic Churches didn't know each other well in absence of effective communication channels. Thus, he dedicated himself in developing and leading the media mission for the Catholic Church in Asia for over next three decades. In 1979, he founded Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN), the largest Christian news agency in Asia, in Hong Kong. He led the agency as the executive director until 2008. He traveled across Asia, developed 14 bureaus covering 22 countries and trained dozens journalists for UCAN, many of whom went on to become journalists for the secular press as well. As a skilled trainer he taught people how to see, listen and feel everything in Asia in their originality and to put them in words properly and effectively. He was rewarded for his outstanding services. In 1998, Catholic Press Association in the United States awarded him the Bishop John England Award. For many years he served as a consulter for the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

Father Bob with reporters during a training in Bangladesh in 2009

Father Bob was my first and so far the best mentor in journalism. He trained me with others in journalism and Catholic Church's mission in Asia among many other things in Bangladesh and Thailand on three occasions in 2009. He is the best human communicator I have ever met in my life. I didn't have a chance to work with him, but he has made a lasting impression on my life and career path. He was a simple, saintly and fatherly figure to all who met and came in touch with him.

He was a highly trained media professional with a great heart full of love and compassion for people and culture in Asia. He always encouraged people to be committed to truth and to see extraordinary in ordinary things. I will never forget his prophetic words: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." He was a great admirer of inter-faith dialogue. I remember how he trained us to love and to see good things in non-Christians, especially Muslims during a training in Bangkok. "Christians are a minority in Asia, but they have survived because people of other faiths have supported them. That is the beauty of inter-faith harmony." He recalled that he was shocked over the 9/11 terrorist attack on Twin Towers. "I was thundered! I realized Christians have failed to have a good dialogue with people who grew up with so much hatred that exploded in such a tragic way!"

Father Bob with reporters from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore and Mongolia at UCAN House, Bangkok, Thailand (2009)

Father Bob was a gift for the Church in Asia and world. Thus, his demise is a great loss for Catholic Church in Asia as well the universal Church. He might have ended his race of life and faith, but his great life and works will continue to inspire many in the days to come. He was a star that will keep flashing and enlightening forever. May God grant his great servant eternal rest in heaven.

*A number of prominent media outlets covered the news of the demise of Father Bob and also paid tributes to him. They are as follows:

UCAN

UCA News founder Robert Astorino dies in US

Asia News

Fr. Robert Astorino, founder of UCA News dies

Catholic News Service

Maryknoll Father Robert Astorino, founder of UCA News, dies at age 77

National Catholic Reporter

Maryknoll Father Robert Astorino, founder of UCA News, dies at age 77

Matters India

Father Robert Astorino--Mission called journalism

Death of Asian Church's Media Pioneer Mourned

LiCAS News

Maryknoll missionary who pioneered church media in Asia dies

Herald Malaysia

UCA News founder Robert Astorino dies

A burning flame of enlightenment for 100 years

Guests and dignitaries on stage during the 100-year jubilee celebrations of church-run St. Nicholas High School in Gazipur district near Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Jan. 2. (Photo: Robin Noel)

Subir Kashmir Pereira is disappointed that he missed out on an event that he had been looking forward to for years: attending the centenary jubilee celebrations of his beloved alma mater, St. Nicholas High School.

Geographical distance and other complications restricted him from attending the Catholic school's reunion in the first week of January.

Pereira, 49, is a Bangladeshi-born American citizen who settled in Maryland in 2007 with his wife and daughter.

St. Nicholas, where he studied from 1988 to 1991, is located in Nagari in Gazipur district of central Bangladesh, about 40 kilometers from the capital Dhaka.

"When the school marked 75 years [in 1995], I could not attend due to personal reasons. I told myself that I would have to attend the 100-year jubilee, but I missed out again. This failure is likely to upset me for the rest of my life," said Pereira, a Catholic.

Employed at a pharmacy of a multinational company in the US capital Washington, Pereira was a youth activist back home. He is also a seasoned poet with several titles published in recent years.

He credits his days at St. Nicholas, run by the Brothers of Holy Cross, for laying the foundation for what he has become today.

A guiding light for Bangladesh's marginalized communities

Sister Salome Nanuar, CSC (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

As a child Salome Nanuar assumed she would end up becoming a poor and marginalized tea estate worker like her parents.

She was born in 1971, the third of six children of an ethnic Kharia family, at Barmachhera village at Srimangal, a tea plantation hub in the Moulvibazar district of northeastern Bangladesh.

Nearly five decades on, Salome has become a Holy Cross nun, dedicating her life as a teacher, catechist and hostels, in the service of socio-economically downtrodden communities, including tea workers.

Sister Salome’s father died when she was at grade four in primary school.

Thanks to support from her two elder brothers and sister in-laws, all of them tea workers, she was able to continue her education.

The biggest support came from the local St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, the oldest and largest parish in predominantly tribal Sylhet Diocese, set up in 1950 by Holy Cross missionary priest Father Vincent Delevi.

Missionaries, martyrs and 500 years of faith in Bangladesh

Archbishop Moses M. Costa of Chittagong delivers a Mass during the annual Marian pilgrimage at Our Lady of Lourdes shrine in Diang in eastern Bangladesh in 2018. The Church will host a jubilee marking 500 years of Christianity in the country on Feb. 7-8 in the same city. (Photo by Stephan Uttom/ucanews.com)

For centuries the port of Chittagong, washed by the waters of the Karnaphuli River, has fascinated and attracted travellers, traders, kings, warriors, and preachers of various religions.

In 1517, the river brought Portuguese Catholic merchants to the port. The first group left after their business was done, but a second group that arrived in 1518 decided to stay in Chittagong and nearby Diang, setting up the first Christian settlements in erstwhile East Bengal (now Bangladesh).

"The Portuguese came mainly for business, but they also brought with them the faith in Christ. They developed the first community of Christians," Holy Cross Archbishop Moses M. Costa of Chittagong told ucanews.com.

Portuguese Jesuit priest Father Francesco Fernandez was the first Catholic missionary to set foot in Chittagong in 1598. Two Jesuit priests — Father Melchior de Fonseca and Father Andre Boves — and two Dominican priests followed his footsteps in 1599, and a band of Augustinian missionary priests turned up in the 1600s.

The Augustinians spearheaded the massive conversion of locals, mostly lower-caste Hindus from fishing community and port laborers, as well as slaves from various Indian states brought to Chittagong by merchant ships in 1622-1635.

By the middle of the 17th century, Catholics in Chittagong and neighboring areas stood at around 29,000.

Father Fonseca and Father Boves set up two churches in Diang and Chittagong in 1600, marking the first foothold of the Church in this part of the world.